A Closer View - Myrna

Antoinette - Here's a closer shot of that first inspiration. Is this the one you meant? Sorry the pictures is still not too clear. The book is quite old. I thought that...



... this Vogue 8567 jacket had possibilities.

I know what you mean about the look of her jackets. Many of her dresses (at least the ones shown in this book) are very soft, flowing, and feminine. That's the "inspired by" aspect I'm paying attention to.

- Myrna

I have a dilemma

Although I've drawn my pattern and cut out my muslin
And it's very luxurious for me to do this muslin for myself. I normally don't do that and this will be a real treat for me.

But at this point I start thinking about the trim and buttons and how I'm going to finish this piece. I was lucky enough during the boom time in my part of the country to have a nice budget for fabrics and a lot of other things - trims, buttons, patterns, and the like. So I have a nice collection of buttons. But I also took so many of my old clothing and took the expensive buttons off and put the old buttons on (you know the cheapie buttons). So I got out my buttons sets, and this is what I have to decide

These are beautiful, but I think they are too formal and limit the use of the jacket...they do have the "CC" logo on them.

These are beautiful and heavy, but again are a little too formal and limiting.

I like these as they will work with something formal and something casual (dress and jeans), but might be a little boring.

These are heavy too, and a little less formal, but might be limiting might not.

I'm at a loss here, maybe I'll know more as the suit comes together.

Inspiration - Myrna

A friend lent me this old and fragile book about Chanel. It was intriguing how many of the style lines that I'm drawn to are attributable to her.




While developing my jacket, I'm keeping in mind what I learned about my fashion personality (not body type) from the book Nothing to Wear by Jesse Garza and Joe Lupo. I'm a Chic Avant-Garde. The picture below cinched it for me. I have an outfit almost exactly like that. I enjoy soft, feminine, and slightly different styles that are not way out there.




My third category would have been classic. Two years ago, I started knitting again. At Knit Night they tease me about the simple sweaters knit with stockinette and ribbing stitch that I tend toward. They're not complicated to knit which is a bit frustrating but I enjoy the clean lines and details, which means I'll wear them. That's what I want with the jacket too - to actually wear it.

This outfit was described as a somewhat frumpy look from the period after the wars when Chanel was in self-imposed exile. That made me laugh because I like the simplicity and contrast. The comment reminded me of a conversation with a friend not too long ago about ways to continue to sew the styles we enjoy and that we know suit our body types while lowering the frump factor. Both of us were feeling like re-runs.

There were two images that I found the most inspiring for my project. The first is a V-neck cardigan style with a horizontal seam at the bust point that includes the dart for shaping and a bow closure. It's less structured than what I had in mind although waist darts could be added. More likely, I'll choose princess seams as they work great on triangle body types like mine.

What I liked about this image was the turned back collar in a contrasting color, something I'd already been thinking about. This idea could be combined with the bust tie above. I have a linen jacket much like that upstairs in my closet. Luckily - LOL - there's plenty of time for more thinking since I can't start until October.

- Myrna

Fabric Fantasies

I live in the U.S. desert Southwest where we wear light-colored cottons in the summer and dark-colored cottons in the winter. Someone recently gave me some luscious cranberry cashmere that would be perfect with black braid and silver buttons. I might use it for my Chanel jacket project, but I'd probably only be able to wear it once a year when I'm at a conference in the Midwest or Northeast. And handling wool in August and September isn't my idea of fun.

A few searches have yielded a couple of possibilities. A "creamy organic cotton boucle" at http://www.casualelegancefabric.com/products/creamy-organic-cotton-boucle.1245.html and a cotton double-knit fabric in off-white or black http://www.trimfabric.com/double-knit.html . Chanel used a lot of jersey, but I've never seen an actual example so I don't know what underlining fabric was used and how it affected the drape.

A linen/cotton or linen/rayon blend might also be good. It seems to me that the jacket works because it is soft in spite of its boxy shape. Any fabric suggestions, especially regarding cotton, linen, or silk, will be gratefully received!

2 steps forward, one step backward.

I know most of you are just getting acquainted and here I am forging ahead. The thing is, I sew what I have an interest in, and I do it step by step ( in most cases, sew 2 seams, unpick 1) until I'm finished. I don't keep a stash of patterns or fabric. I start a project, I work my way though it, and then I finish it. I choose my next project, buy the fabric and start all over again. So you see, now I've started this jacket I have to work to the end. 

I did manage to make up the side seams by stealing the inside facing. I even managed to make them match! I put in my princess seam darts and then followed through with a tuck to the pocket.  I'm being humbled by this process: I used to mock faux anything. I've now got a faux princess tuck, and I'm contemplating faux pockets, by running my trim from the corner of one (pre-existing welt pocket) to the other edge in a curve like a tidy wee Chanel patch pocket. What's the world coming to! 

Because of all my tight cutting I fused the entire front and back with interfacing - and used fusible interfacing for the facings and collars. It's just not strong enough though, the collar's not sitting well through the roll line and I think it's because the undercollar isn't supporting the collar enough. I am now going to go back and herringbone stitch (catch stitch) in some hair canvas. That's a good evening in front of the telly.

I've just pinned my black retro buttons on to see how they look. Sometimes houndstooth can look dangerously like clown suit fabric and I was worried by how round and shiny these buttons are, but I think they're OK. Won't be accesorizing this with a plastic red nose though, and my shoes will be not be large and pointy.

Refashioning a jacket is much much harder work than sewing a new one from scratch. Just thought I'd put that out there for my sew along buddies who are also refashioning something. Mind you, I think I'm the only one who's taken a jacket that was too small and tried to refashion it larger.

Oh and here's the original for you to compare my progress. In case you are thinking it looks too nice to be cut up, let me say that this jacket had shoulder pads to rival a grid iron player. It was more 80's than Dynasty.

Introduction

Hello everyone. I'm really excited about this sew-along. My mom sewed a "Chanel" jacket and wrap skirt about 45+ years ago. I'm not sure why she kept it all this time, especially since she didn't like it, but I think she struggled so much with it, she was not about to let it go. Surprisingly, she wanted me to have it, to "do something with", so I am going to attempt to turn both (tiny) pieces into one wearable jacket. As you may be able to see, the trim and lining has already been removed (thankfully it was not quilted down). I am starting over with the lining, of course, but I may reuse the trim.



Makes a nice contrast to the purple walls, lol. I just moved my sewing room into our daughter's old bedroom, therefore purple and green walls (they actually look pretty good). As you can see, there is a size issue to overcome.

Another one from the back


Once I pick both pieces apart, I need to zigzag all the edges and throw everything into a woolwash (by hand, of course) to get decades of dust out. I am "interviewing" several patterns right now and haven't decided yet, but once I narrow it down I will need to make a full muslin and then lay out and piece to that (I think).

Of course, since I started looking at patterns, I also looked at the Fall/Winter Couture Collection and liked it a lot, so now I am starting to eyeball this other fabric I have....oh no!

Playing Detective: Chanel and Her World

When I'm about to jump into a big project, I love to get background information. In this case, I borrowed Chanel and Her World from the library and spent three days immersed in it. Before this project, I knew very little about Coco Chanel. But when I laid eyes on the book's cover image, with that controlled glance over the shoulder, the draping strands of pearls, the not-carelessly-dangled lit cigarette -- well, this is the image I associate with her:

I'm so glad I read this book! I was looking for specific clues as to what inspired Karl Lagerfeld to design the Pre-Fall 2009 collection (i.e. "Paris-Moscou"), which debuted last December, from which my inspiration garment comes. I knew there was a so-called "Russian period" in Chanel's career, but I didn't realize how many styles she is credited with pioneering or bringing to popularity, such as a functional swimsuit. Until Chanel's efforts, the swimsuit was made of wool (!!!) and was basically impossible to swim in. ("All the better to oppress women with" was apparently the societal mantra of the day.) This is one step better than wool, as worn by Chanel at the beach in 1914:

I love that the suit above was a huge improvement over the traditional version in wool! Chanel kept streamlining that swimsuit to what is essentially a one-piece suit with boy-short-style bottoms. Not the cheek-baring boy short of today, but longer, like mid-thigh (I guess more biker-short?).

Chanel is credited with bringing the cape to popularity. It is interesting to me how the capes fastened using this harness-like contraption, because harnesses and "cage" elements are ever-present in recent shows:

Chanel had a famous affair with the Duke of Westminster, then the richest man in England, and incorporated a taste of the English countryside into her designs. Here she is, on the left, sporting some oversized tweed. Street urchin chic, I say:

There is just a tiny section on her Russian-influenced years 1920-1923, during which, again, she had an affair -- this time with Grand Duke Dimitri Pavlovitch -- that brought her to Russia. Here is Pavlovitch, and funny enough, the general military feel is very familiar in my inspiration jacket:

Chanel introduced some of that Russian influence in her next collection, pulling in both "high" (fur) and "low" (peasant blouses) traditions. Here are some sketches from that collection:

Seems that Chanel's Russian collection featured more of the beautiful traditional Russian embroidery and not so much of the blinged-out embellishment of Lagerfeld's Paris-Moscou. Not that I'm critical of Lagerfeld's choices -- obvz. I'm OK with at least one of those jackets since it is my inspiration jacket. :)

There were so many beautiful clothes sketched and photographed in this book, and most of them were pre-1950's, before the period of Chanel's iconic jacket. In this Russian collection you could already see some trace of that iconic jacket coming into form, though. Below is a sketch from the Russian collection in 1923, and while you see some opulent furs, what caught my eye was the white jacket in the middle, with the contrast trim around the neckline, front placket, and sleeves:

OK, back to the hunt for clues to my inspiration jacket... I kept a careful eye out for anything Chanel designed that would qualify by today's standards as over-the-top. The closest I came were some pictures from her beautiful pre-WWII Gypsy collection from 1938, which seem more over-the-top when compared to her previous work, not really by today's standards:

It blew me away to see the photo above, right -- I think I have worn outfits like this in the past couple of years! So modern. I guess so timeless.

Some of you are probably Chanel experts and you know all these photos and what pages they're on in the book! But this was mostly new for me, and I recommend this book if you want to get grounded in Chanel. I'd love to pick up another biography later, maybe after the sew-along, to find out more about her affair with the German officer that branded Chanel a Nazi sympathizer (there we go with the affairs again) -- this was pretty much glossed over in this book; to get another perspective on the totality of her influence on modern fashion; and to dig deeper into the sweeping changes in culture and society that took fashion from the hands of mostly female designers in the early 20th century to mostly male designers by the middle of the century.

I think I've picked out my pattern and I've been hunting faithfully for a wool jacket to recon into my Chanel jacket, but it may not work out and I may need to make this jacket from new fabric. I'll give it another week or two and post an update.

*** Update *** Nancy K. brought to my attention that the Grand Duke was in exile in France, which is likely how he and Chanel connected. I re-read the Russia section in this book and it implies the same, so I remembered it wrong when I posted yesterday! Thanks for the correction, Nancy K. :)